***The following was our 2026 program. Programming announcements for 2027 will be in the new year.***
CHILDREN’S PROGRAM WITH SLAVKO BUCIFAL
Slavko Bucifal is a drama teacher, experimental sound artist (Lights in Pairs), and bassist for The Rehearsal. His work explores off-kilter compositions that drift between structure and spontaneity, often anchored by synthesizers. Spanning a wide sonic range, his practice incorporates noise, glitch, field recordings, drone, and improvisation.
This children’s workshop invites participants into an interactive exploration of sound and performance. Attendees will be encouraged to listen closely to their natural surroundings, capture those sounds, and transform them into original compositions.
MARK CERNIGOJ
JOSÉ DELGADO-GUEVARA
Mr. Delgado-Guevara, originally from Costa Rica, is an accomplished musician who has made significant strides in his field. He earned his Associate Degree in Music Education from the Conservatory Castella for the Visual and Performing Arts in Costa Rica, a Bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Costa Rica and a Master’s degree in viola performance from Western Michigan University. His formal training is complemented by extensive composition studies with notable figures such as Bernal Morales, Benjamin Gutierrez, and Luis Diego Herra in Costa Rica and C.C. Smith in Michigan. Delgado-Guevara aims to achieve profound emotional depth with minimal musical material. He categorizes his works into two distinct types: autobiographical compositions that reflect his personal experiences and pure music that exists independently of narrative. Mr. Delgado-Guevara is currently focused on composing pedagogical works for the harp and is determined to inspire and educate future musicians.
LORI GOLDSTON
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic, is full, textured, committed and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography.
Current and former collaborators and/or bosses include Earth, Nirvana, Mirah, Jessika Kenney, Ilan Volkov, Eyvind Kang, Stuart Dempster, David Byrne, Terry Riley, Jherek Bischoff, Malcom Goldstein, Steve Von Till, Lonnie Holley, Cat Power, Ellen Fullman, Maya Dunietz, Mik Quantius, Embryo, O Paon, Tara Jane O’Neil, Natacha Atlas, Broken Water, Ed Pias, Christian Rizzo and Sophie Laly, Threnody Ensemble, Cynthia Hopkins, 33 Fainting Spells, Vanessa Renwick, Mark Mitchell, Lynn Shelton, and many more.
Her work has been commissioned by and/or performed at the Kennedy Center, Sydney Festival, Cineteca Nacional de México, Tectonics Festival, Frye Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival (TBA), WNYC, The New Foundation, Paris Fashion Week, Northwest Film Forum, On the Boards, Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Jewish Film Festival, Bumbershoot, Crossing Border Festival, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Joe’s Pub, the Stone, University of Chicago, and venues large and small throughout North America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.
RAGHU LOKANATHAN
OK VANCOUVER OK
In an era often dominated by digital uniformity, ok vancouver ok stands as a monument to the beautiful textures of analog experimentation and an uncompromising DIY spirit. Since 2004, the avant-garde, multi-instrumental project of songwriter and visual artist Jeffrey Mark Johnson has bypassed the mainstream to carve out a distinct, fiercely independent legacy in the global underground. Defying easy categorization, the project treats songwriting as an open canvas, blending a restless, genre-fluid philosophy with a raw, unpredictable creative energy. For Johnson, the sonic and the visual are entirely intertwined. As a dedicated visual artist, he creates the striking paintings, hand-drawn illustrations, and album artwork that define the project’s physical releases, while also directing and animating its music videos. This vibrant, hands-on aesthetic mirrors a profound dedication to the craft of recording. ok vancouver ok shifts seamlessly between a gritty home-recording practice—utilizing cassette 4-tracks, 8-tracks, and reel-to-reel tape machines—and deliberate studio sessions engineered by some of the independent community’s most respected ears, including Eli Moore (of the K Records band LAKE), Jesse Gander (The Hive / Raincity Recorders), and Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington. This prolific body of work has been documented across nearly every format imaginable, from classic vinyl LPs, CDs, and digital releases via Bandcamp, to underground staples like cassettes and custom CDRs. The music has been championed by an array of highly curated independent labels, seeing releases on international imprints like Geneva’s Les Disques Bongo Joe, Lost Sound Tapes, Kingfisher Bluez, Greenbelt Collective, and the legendary K Records.
THE REHEARSAL REIMAGINED
Local artists The Rehearsal have built a reputation for driving through original songs with momentum and pace. For Casse-Tête, bandmates Jonathan McIntosh and Slavko Bucifal pivot away embracing a more minimal and exploratory approach. Fast riffs and compact structures give way to sparse frameworks shaped by improvisational glitches, loops, and textured noise captured in real time.
The simple foundations of their songs interact with drones, repeating motifs, and fractured sounds, opening space for shifting emotional landscapes. At times they are disorienting, at times melodic, and at times quietly reflective. The result is a reimagining of their sound that feels immediate and unpredictable.
https://therehearsalband.
https://lightsinpairs.
KEVIN ROMAIN
Kevin Romain is a drummer, improviser, composer, educator, bandleader, curator, and researcher based in East Vancouver. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Simon Fraser University. Since the early 2000s he has performed regularly across North America as well in Europe, West Africa, China and Japan. Romain’s current research centres on refining the conceptual framework he calls “Sensorimotor-Affective Polytemporality.” He can be heard performing regularly with art pop ensemble Only A Visitor (Mint Records), Itamar Erez‘ quartet, and groups under his leadership including Salience Network, Axis Of Evil and his solo performance project Autopoietic.
OLIVE SHAKUR
Olive Shakur belongs to an association of tendencies and heteronyms in a mad, queer, brown settler body that has appeared as an elusive and mercurial utility player in creative music, noise, punk, jazz, and the institutional avant-garde; its music has been featured by Arraymusic, Art Gallery of Calgary, Casse-Tete, Destroy Vancouver, FUSE, LIVE Biennale, neither/nor, Open Space, Powell Street Festival, Radio Free Stein, Western Front, VIVO, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival.
JEREMY STEWART
As a guitarist, singer, improviser, and songwriter, Jeremy Stewart has toured Canada, sharing stages or collaborating with artists like Oxbow, Lightning Bolt, Lori Goldston, Geoff Berner, Wax Mannequin, Stanley Jason Zappa, Catherine Sikora, Matt Weston, Harold Klunder, and Eldritch Priest, among many others. Stewart is the guitarist of improvisational metallic noise project Christians, winners of the 2021 FVMA for Experimental Artist of the Year. Fellow Christians members have included Stanley Jason Zappa, Wayne Adams, Nick Skrowaczewski, and Justin Arding, among others.
[Christians’ S/Z is] “splendidly fiery… close to the ideal of what fusion can be”
Byron Coley, The Wire
V VECKER
Keith Arthur Wecker (b. 1983) is a composer, improvisor, and multi-instrumentalist using technology to explore the timbral and temporal properties of granular synthesis in the creation of electroacoustic music. Keith focuses on bringing the in-between sounds to the forefront through a layering-intensive process, creating rich sonic textures that evoke a meditative environment for the listener to immerse themselves in.
His personal approach to sound creation is highlighted by the diversity of the acts he has shared the stage with (Tim Hecker, Clark, Sumac, Thundercat, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance, Goblin, Lori Goldston, and Sun Araw) as well as participating in projects of Anthony Braxton and Glenn Branca. Keith has had his music featured across North America, including multiple appearances at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, New Forms Festival, MOXSonic, VU Symposium, the International Computer Music Conference, NYCEMF, and Improvisors Summit PDX.
Keith maintains a rigorous dedication to learning through both traditional and nontraditional educational formats. As a recent graduate of the University of Central Missouri, where he holds a Master of Arts in Music Technology, his work has been featured through his participation in several artistic residencies, including Lobe Sound Studios in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Lightbox Performance in Detroit, Michigan, and the Reforesters Laboratory in New York City, NY. Keith is enrolled at the University of Florida, where he will begin his PhD studies in composition and technology in the fall of 2026.
BEN WILSON
Ben Wilson is an improviser and composer based in Vancouver performing solo electroacoustic music and drums in psych rock outfit The Zaxons.
He has studied, performed, and toured across Europe, Australia, Japan, the United States, and Canada and currently serves as Technical Manager at Western Front.